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Indigenous Civil Resistance and Treaty Rights

2016 saw the emergence of a powerful movement against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) through land vital to Native communities, especially the Standing Rock Sioux. For non-Native people who have not been paying attention to Indigenous rights struggles over the past several decades, the #NoDAPL movement may have served as a wake-up call to some of the injustices still confronting these communities. For others, as pointed out in this article, #NoDAPL is simply another in a long line of civil resistance struggles Native communities have mobilized, often successfully, to claim their rights. The author highlights this recent history of Native American and First Nations civil resistance movements on Turtle Island—the name, from Lenape mythology, that refers to the landmass others call North America—and takes stock of their characteristics, challenges, and successes, arguing that nonviolent resistance has been a more effective strategy than violent resistance in defending Native peoples and their “lifeways.”

The author begins with the fact that, unlike other identity groups struggling for justice in the U.S. or Canada, Indigenous groups can claim sovereign rights as nations with their own governance structures—which also means that activists often mobilize in tandem with, as opposed to against, their (tribal) governments. Practically speaking, this fact provides Indigenous activists with an additional tool in their activist toolbox: the nation-to-nation treaties previously negotiated with the settler governments of the United States and Canada. He notes that occasionally simply mentioning the existence of a treaty, and the fact that “tribal lawyers are standing by,” has been enough for action to be taken in favor of Native communities. In other cases, of course, the process is not so easy, but the existence of treaties as legal documents to which the federal government must be held accountable helps enormously. For instance, in 1974 two brothers from the Anishinaabe nation, upon realizing that they had treaty rights to do so, “purposefully and openly fished on off-reservation waters” and presented a copy of the treaty to the game warden who came to arrest them. The matter was taken up in the courts, who ultimately ruled in their favor. But although they had established their legal right to fish in these off-reservation waters, they still faced the wrath of angry mobs who met them with racial slurs and sometimes even violence as they were trying to fish. The author himself, along with other allies with the organization Witness for Peace, would, in the late 1980s/early 1990s, accompany them to the fishing spot as a protective presence. Eventually, media attention, which highlighted the contrast between the nonviolent Anishinaabe people simply fishing and the “inebriated racists” trying to stop them, shifted the opinion of the public and ultimately government officials in favor of treaty rights. This case draws out a number of elements of Native civil resistance worthy of note, in addition to treaty rights leverage: the strategic importance of nonviolent discipline, the power of media in shaping the outcome, the key supportive role that can be played by non-Native allies (as well as by Indigenous allies globally), and the ultimate need for broader public education and opinion change on Native history, rights, and struggles.

Beyond treaty rights (mostly regarding access to resources on land ceded in treaties—sometimes with dubious levels of consent—to which tribes have historical ties), the author mentions mobilization around a range of other issues: environmental protection, tribal health care, law enforcement, borders/boundaries, tribal dignity, consultation (on various policies affecting tribes), and basic sovereignty. Of these, he pays special attention to anti-nuclear and anti-pipeline (environmental) activism against attempts to store nuclear waste and extract or transport oil close to Native communities, noting how these movements have become “more effective at drawing [in] coalition partners and using their special sovereignty statuses to wield power disproportionate to their populations.”

Throughout the article, the complex and multi-faceted nature of Native identity—and its relation to various forms of resistance—emerges as a common theme. First, the author brings attention to the importance of national (e.g., Sioux) and band (e.g., Brule Sioux) identities as opposed to the blanket identity of “Native American” or “First Nation,” which he says is more often used by non-Native people than by Indigenous people themselves. He does, however, note the way in which a pan-Native American identity developed to some degree in the U.S. (through the emergence of AIM—American Indian Movement—activism in the late 1960s/1970s) whereas it did not in Canada. Finally, he highlights the emergence of a complicated warrior identity, both in relation to participation in the U.S. military—often in the name of and to gain status for their tribal nations rather than out of allegiance to an oppressive federal government—and in relation to longstanding anti-settler resistance, including the resistance of nonviolent “warriors.”

CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE

From April 2016 until late February 2017, enduring a fierce winter, Standing Rock Sioux water protectors and their allies created an encampment where they gathered and prayed to resist the proposed construction nearby of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) under the Missouri River and across their sacred sites. The encampment and its acts of civil disobedience drew widespread media attention and support but also brought repressive responses from local police and private security companies. Although President Obama temporarily halted construction in light of the Standing Rock people’s concerns, President Trump has since reinstated the project, and the camp has been dismantled. This article helps to situate the so-called #NoDAPL movement in the broader context and history of “settler colonialism” (Whyte 2017), broken treaties, exploitation, and persistent Indigenous civil resistance on Turtle Island (or North America). Understanding construction of the pipeline as part of this continuum of oppression, displacement, and trust violation endows the resistance movement with greater meaning—a movement that needs to be seen not as an over-reaction to an isolated incident but as a justified response to a steady onslaught of injustices.

More broadly, this history focuses attention on the widespread modes of domination by which some groups of human beings interact with both other groups of human beings and the natural world—instrumentalizing both for self-centered gain with no regard for Indigenous self-determination or ecological balance. It is becoming abundantly clear that such practices are neither socially nor environmentally sustainable. As climate change becomes a clear and present danger, non-Native folks have much to learn—and fast—from resistance movements and lifeways of Indigenous peoples about how to live sustainably without obliterating the world or one another.

TALKING POINTS

Nonviolent resistance has had greater success than violent resistance in Indigenous struggles against settler oppression and exploitation in the U.S. and Canada.

Indigenous civil resistance—which affirms the sovereign rights of Native communities as nations—is unique among other forms of civil resistance in North America insofar as it can leverage treaty rights in its struggles for justice.

Indigenous civil resistance movements are building connections with other Indigenous allies globally and with non-Indigenous settler allies locally, who can support Native-led civil resistance movements in various ways, including as a protective presence at actions or protests.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

For Indigenous activists, this research highlights the importance of maintaining nonviolent discipline, while also thinking strategically about both the use of media and collaboration with global and local allies to facilitate shifts in public opinion and create broad-based movements that will be more resilient and have greater impact. For non-Native allies, this research reminds activists of the broader historical context informing Indigenous struggles and what that means for the significance of a specific movement itself but also for the role of settler allies in that movement—those who benefit in many ways from the forms of exploitation that have deprived Native communities of their livelihoods and sacred places but who also have access to particular forms of leverage that can put pressure on those spear-heading that exploitation and dispossession today. For instance, allies of #NoDAPL can go right to the source and move their personal savings out of banks financing the DAPL project and into local banks or community credit unions that are not. Going a step further, they can mobilize their employers and cities to do the same. (See http://www.defunddapl.org/ for further information.)

More broadly, non-Native allies can educate their families, friends, and communities on the historical and contemporary injustices facing Native communities so that Indigenous civil resistance movements can be met with even greater empathy and support. Finally, activists should continue to draw out the connections between local struggles like #NoDAPL and the broader global climate justice movement; the former grounds and gives a human face to an issue as daunting as energy consumption and climate change, while the latter provides #NoDAPL and other such movements with additional urgency and wider relevance that can galvanize broader publicity and mobilization.

Witness for Peace: According to the mission statement on its website, “Witness for Peace (WFP) is a politically independent, nationwide grassroots organization of people committed to nonviolence and led by faith and conscience. WFP’s mission is to support peace, justice and sustainable economies in the Americas by changing U.S. policies and corporate practices that contribute to poverty and oppression in Latin America and the Caribbean. We stand with people seeking justice.” Activists with the organization have often engaged in unarmed accompaniment to protect other activists/ human rights defenders in areas of concern, using their international or otherwise privileged status to deter violence.

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